Sunday, 5 January 2014

New year, new start!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, if you celebrate it.

Again I find myself in the the position of having to say sorry for being away for so long.

I'm delighted to see the number of people who have been visiting and reading my rambling. I WILL make a massive effort to keep this blog up to date as a way of saying thank you. In fact I will make new year's resolution to write this blog at least once a month. How does that sound?

As it turns out, I have a lot to tell you. So much, it's difficult to know where to start.

I have two really exciting things to tell you.

The first, if you didn't already know, is the new covers that I've had drawn for all the books so far.

All In a Day's Work - New cover by Chris Askham.

This is the new cover drawn by Chris Askham. As you can easily see, Chris has put a lot of work into it and the pair of us put a lot of thought into it too.

It all started back in November when I went to a book fair to sell paperback versions of my books. The customers always went for the cover of the third book (see below). I think there were two main reasons for this. The first was that it had Isomee on the cover. The second was that it had more colour than the other two.

Original book 3 cover

Armed with this information, Chris and I came up with a composition that would use and improve on these two aspects. As you can see we put Isomee right at the front and kept many of the original artist's elements. Brackenbelly is stood behind her in a protective pose with his sword out ready for action. This was important too because I wanted people to know that there would be swords and action in it as well as a sweet looking eleven year old girl. The main addition has been uncle Hogg-Bottom. Chris has captured him brilliantly. He has just the right amount of menace. I love the way he's looming over everything.

Two's Company artwork by Chris Askham

For the second book, Two's Company, both Chris and I wanted something more dynamic and eye-catching. As the book is packed full of action, this was easy. I'm sure you'll agree that this cover is awesome!

Chris is currently working on the third cover. This one will have Wilbakar on. It'll be the first time we've seen him and I'm very excited.

After that, he'll do a new cover for book 4 and then we'll be moving on to a whole new chronicle. There's also the possibility of a collected edition of the first four stories available in paperback only.

At the moment All in a Day's Work and Two's Company are only available with the new covers on Kindle. Paperbacks will follow very shortly.I think that's enough for now. I'll save the other news for future blogs.Please visit the Kinmaran Chronicles website for more pictures. Look in the Uma Archives. You'll need to sign up for access. Don't worry it's quick and easy.See you on Kinmara soon!